requested to enrol himself as a member of the
National Association;" also, "that the
recommendation in the report, to raise immediately
a sum of not less than five thousand pounds
be carried into execution, and that an
additional contribution of one shilling per
nominal horse-power from each mill occupier
(making a total of two shiillings per horse-
power)  be at once called for, to enable the
committee to carry out the recommendation
to defend, at the cost of the Association, all
cases which they may consider fairly to come
within the sphere of the Association."

We here plant our flag on this abandoned
work. It would not stand a storm, and it
has yielded, partly to the feeling of the
country, partly to a dread of the remote
thunders of the law. Let us follow the
Association to its new position. It undertakes
"to protect its members  from improper
prosecutions." Nothing more. If truly nothing
more, then may those members who do
not happen to be paupers, who can afford
to advance costs that will be reimbursed
to them, thank the Association, but decline
to pay two shillings per horse-power for
nothing. The cost of an improper prosecution
falls upon the persons bringing it. No
costs are payable, unless the prosecution has
been ratified by judicial approbation; if in
the face of that, the National Association,
setting itself as a judge over a judge, choose
to cry "Fie, that is improper!" and so pay
the costs of the defeated mill owner, it surely
makes use of its funds in opposition to the
law, and earns the dangerous and ugly name
that law-books will, in that case, give to its
proceedings. If it abstain from doing this,
it can do nothing.

The Association have—we suspect illegally
—been paying three hundred and eighteen
pounds, the lawyers' bill of a firm that
stopped an action, with consent to pay one
hundred and fifty pounds, in pure benevolence,
to the widow of a man slaughtered
by machinery. This they did for the gentlemen
of the firm, quoth the report, considering
"the great expense to which they would
be put by the action, even if it resulted in
their favour,—Government not being liable,
like other plaintiffs, in case of failure, to
pay the costs of the defendant." Now,
this is the one display of strength in their
whole case; and we will hear what its worth
is. Every point in the Factory Act has
been scanned by the Association; and the
abolition of the twenty-fourth and twenty-
fifth clauses—providing for a prosecution
instituted by inspectors on behalf of persons
suffering from bodily hurt, occasioned by
unfenced machinery—has been specifically
recommended. Those gentlemen who talk
of government not paying the costs of
a victorious defendant, and of their just
intervention on that ground, must therefore
perfectly well know what the contents
of the said clauses are. In the twenty-fifth,
it is distinctly and circumstantially
provided that no mill owner, prosecuted
unsuccessfully for any case of accident within
his factory, shall be made liable for the
expense to which he has been put by an
improper prosecution. The inspector having
promoted an action on the part of Government,
the clause goes on to declare, that "in
case a verdict shall be found for the defendant,
or judgment shall be recovered against
the plaintiff, or the plaintiff shall be
non-suited, the defendant shall have the like
remedies for his costs against the inspector,
as he might have had against the plaintiff."

What, therefore, must finally be done with
the contributed two shillings per horse-power?
It will all go, at last, to the payment of the
dinner-bills of foolish deputations; and to the
payment of the printers' bills of committee-
men who publish pamphlets, called Reports,
and Special Reports, loaded with foolish talk
about the innocence of patient mill owners
hunted and harried by pseudo-philanthropists
for refusing to fence their shafts and protect
life in factories; the "negligence, fool-hardiness,
and disobedience" of the poor men who,
having perished uopn unfenced shafts, lie
silent in their graves. The only end of all
which writing is, that gentlemen who pay
two shillings per horse-power for the
satisfaction of getting such stuff printed, place
themselves in a very unfavourable light
before their countrymen. They cannot do
better than press upon the managers of their
so-called National Association, the propriety
of devoting the funds they have in hand to
the fencing of some part of the machinery of
their subscribers, and dissolving forthwith.

               THE SARDINIANS.

IN a former paper we described the Island
of Sardinia. The people are not less
picturesque than the island. Their costume,
their customs, their amusements, are all ready
to the hand of a melodramatist or ballet-
composer. They are handsome, after the dark
style of the south, half-Moorish, half-Italian.
Among the men, beards, moustaches, and
long, flowing dark locks frame their dusky,
fierce, black-eyed visages. In figure they are
slender and active, and like all foresters and
pastoral tribes. So much preamble is needful
before giving the following descriptions of
costumes, in order that our readers might
fill in the faces and figures, male and female.

The men's dress consists of the veste, a
double-breasted dark cloth waistcoat,
buttoned to the neck; the calzonia, pair of very
full dark breeches of the same material,
extending to the knees, and edged with black
velvet; the mutande, white cotton drawers,
very full, terminating inside; high gaiters of
dark cloth or black leather, for horsemen;
ajabbano, or cloak with a hood, like the capote
worn by the Moors, of material according to